Product Description

In the fall of 1978, Neil Young and Crazy Horse undertook atour that mixed in songs off of what became RUST NEVER SLEEPS with a variety of older material. The stage set included oversize amps and a road crew cloaked not unlike Star Wars' Jawas, making this tour's distinctions as visual as they were aural. The film and recording of this tour were released as LIVE RUST. The show starts out with Neil Young solo, usingacoustic guitar, harmonica and piano to perform the country-folk "Sugar Mountain", "I Am A Child", "After The Gold Rush" and "Comes A Time", the title track of the record releasedshortly before the tour started.
Unlike his peers, Youngembraced the punk scene by writing "My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)", his tribute to Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten, which wrapped up the acoustic section of the show. Other new material debuted on this tour included "Sedan Delivery", "Powderfinger" and "Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)". These tunes benefited from the might of Crazy Horse, whose punch provided particularly potent on "Cinnamon Girl", "Like A Hurricane" and the sobering "Tonight's The Night".

Track Listing

1. Sugar Mountain
2. I Am A Child
3. Comes A Time
4. After The Goldrush
5. My My Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)
6. When You Dance I Can Really Love
7. Loner
8. Needle And The Damage Done
9. Lotta Love
10. Sedan Delivery
11. Powderfinger
12. Cortez The Killer
13. Cinnamon Girl
14. Like A Hurricane
15. Hey Hey My My (Into The Black)
16. Tonight's The Night

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22360 in Music
• Released on: 1993-06-28
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Live

Amazon.co.uk Review
Mere months passed between the release of Neil Young's mid-career milestone Rust Never Sleeps and this 1979 tour recording, which documents a late-'78 San Francisco performance. Indeed, Live Rust boasts four songs from the album that gave it its name. It's also sequenced in the same spirit as its studio sibling. As with Rust Never Sleeps, Live Rust opens with steady-flowing acoustic numbers before swirling into an electric vortex. What was side four of the original two-record version--"Like a Hurricane", "Hey, Hey, My, My", and "Tonight's the Night"--is arguably Young and Crazy Horse at their peak as a live unit, with all due respect to 1991's estimable Weld and 1997's desultory Year of the Horse. Few rock bands rank with Young and his stalwart electric trio, and Live Rust presents them in all their raging glory. --Steven Stolder

Customer Reviews

The only essential live album
I've never really bothered with live albums in the past, always finding them a poor substitute of actually being there. This album changed my mind...

Great album, but...
shame that Cortez The Killer has been edited down on the CD release. I first owned this album in 1979 on cassette and the intro to Cortez (the best bit of this particular track) was much longer - guess they had to cut something down to squeeze it onto a single CD. Good album though, with four consecutive classics - Powderfinger, Cortez The Killer, Cinnamon Girl, and Like A Hurricane (which is just gorgeous).

Excellent live album
Originally a double LP, "Live Rust" is divided about equally between acoustic numbers and electric rock n' roll, and while it doesn't quite match the searing power of "Weld", "Live Rust" comes off an excellent live album and a fine career summary, including both older material and then-new songs.
The sound is very good, and while Neil Young rarely strays too far from the original arrangements, several songs do pack a little more punch than the studio versions.

The early "Sugar Mountain", the oft-quoted "Hey Hey, My My", a great rendition of "The Needle And The Damage Done", the awesome eight-minute "Like A Hurricane", and the ballad "When You Dance I Can Really Love" are all among the highlights, as is Young's smouldering guitar playing (he is really quite underrated in that respect).
But the best song on "Live Rust" has to be the magnificent rocker "Powderfinger", one of Neil Young's best, most vivid and most melodious electric rock songs, featuring two riveting guitar solos.
This one epic song is pure, incendiary rock n' roll, and even if the rest of the album had been completely worthless, "Powderfinger" alone would have been worth the price of admission.
4 1/2 stars.